shrimp being murdered

[murphy]

Hi,


Over the past two months, on different occasions, I have put in several peppermint shrimp, cleaning shrimp and coral banded shrimp into my 90 gallon reef only to find them mutilated by the next day. I can't figure out who is doing the killing. Here are the suspects:



Hippo Tang
Sailfin Tang
Foxface(rabitfish)
Percula Clowns
Sand Sifter
Sea Serpent
Strawberry Crab
hermit crabs
snails


My local fish store believes all the inhabitants listed above are harmless and that there is a rouge crab or other species in the tank that was a stowaway in the live rock. Have not added live rock, don't think that's the problem. I want be able to add peppermint shrimp to get rid of the aptasia and cleaner shrimp and coral banded shrimp for their beauty. Any and all comments are certainly appreciated..

 

[bang guy]

Are you sure you're not just seeing shrimp molts? They often molt when stressed and moving them to a new environment is very stressful.

How do you acclimate your shrimp?

 

[lmforbis]

That very well could be the case. Or as Bang said they could be just molts. Although you have a couple fish that need a much bigger tank they wouldn't likely take their aggression out on shrimp more like each other. Now if you had a trigger, he'd be my suspect.

 

[bang guy]

By Sea Serpent do you mean Serpent Starfish? A large one could attack a shrimp after it molts however, I doubt you would see anything left over, just a big lump in the Serpent Star.

 

[murphy]

absolutely not molts.....some have gone missing after a coupe days of normal activity, never to be seen again. Some have lived a couple days only to be located in pieces at the bottom of the tank. Yesterday I put in a pair of coral banded shrimp. They were in pieces by morning.
I have used the standard acclimation procedure... placing the bag with the shrimp in my aquarium and adding my tank water slowly for a couple hours. I release them gently onto a rock. They both looked great until their demise.
Have had shrimp with other fish for years with no problem. I am puzzled!!!

 

[murphy]

yes a serpent star...when I did find remains of shrimp, they were usually meaty chunks. Found both coral banded today mutilated in chunks...still a lot of edible meat on them so it was not like something was starving and ate them. It's weird..

 

[2quills]

In my experience shrimps can be tricky to acclimate.

It's possible they didn't acclimate well and died then you crabs fed off of the corpses.

I've had peppermint shrimp dissapeared after a day or two, leaving me to believe they died in the rock work somewhere only to show up out of the blue one night several months later.

 

[murphy]

Wow the acclimation issue is definitely a possibility I never thought of. Started reading up on shrimp and will definitely acclimate for a longer period of time. I thought an hour was good enough, but I'm going to triple that. Thanks for all you help!

 

[bang guy]

Wow the acclimation issue is definitely a possibility I never thought of. Started reading up on shrimp and will definitely acclimate for a longer period of time. I thought an hour was good enough, but I'm going to triple that. Thanks for all you help!

The major acclimation issue is salinity. Second is PH.

Base the time you acclimate on the salinity difference between the water in the bag with the water in your system.

A drip acclimation is best in my opinion.

 

[jay0705]

Inverts are much more sensitive then fish.